Daytona Beach Mainland star running back Trey Rodriguez announced his intentions to play his college football at FAU via his Twitter account Thursday morning, which came as no surprise to his father, Hector Rodriguez.

“We’ve been talking a couple of weeks about different schools and he brought up Alia a lot and I just told him, you know what, you’ve got to do what you think is best, go where your heart is,” Hector told the Sentinel on Thursday night.

Alia is Trey’s one-year old daughter and the bottom line in his decision process all along was to find a place where he could still be close to his daughter. It appears he has found it in the Boca Raton school, which is about 220 miles south of Daytona Beach.

Rodriguez is supposed to be taking an official visit to Southern Miss, but his father did not say if that visit was still planned. Trey could not be reached Thursday night.

Rodriguez has about 20 other FBS scholarship offers, but he’s settled in with his decision and his father said new FAU running backs coach Roger Harriott was instrumental in the process of luring Trey to be part of the Owls’ new direction, which is led by new head coach Charlie Partridge.

Harriott actually got into a bit of hot water when he welcomed Trey aboard via Twitter today, and not being as familiar with NCAA rules, Harriott probably did not realize he was committing a direct secondary violation, which FAU will be self-reporting if other schools do not report it first.

Rodriguez posted to his Twitter account, @RodriguezTrey1, “I just commited to FAU with my new running back coach for the next four years @coachharriott.”

“I’ve talked to him the last 10 days, every other day and he really seemed to be a good guy,” Hector said of Harriott.

He's also talked to his son about all of the options.

“We started talking about Alia and how [Trey] wants to be close to Alia ... and I said, 'Well, you’ve got your options because there’s more than being a football player, and more than being a student, but very important to be a father and be close enough to still be there.

“It’s a lot of pressure, but he’ll be all right.”

Injuries to teammates forced Rodriguez to play quarterback for the final five games this past season and he responded by guiding the Bucs to the 6A state semifinals. He still managed to rush for 1,374 yards and 13 TDS while passing for 845 yards and ten more TDs. Between Mainland and Seabreeze High, where he spent his first three years, he managed 3,837 career rushing yards. He was hampered by a torn ACL lduring his sophomore year at Seabreeze.

He transferred to Mainland for the spring semester prior to his senior season.

“He wants to be an impact player as a freshman and FAU is not a bad school. He had other options, of course, but he had a choice and I told him, ‘Whatever choice you make, I’m going to support you,’ ” Hector said. “I talked to him about commitment. …I said, ‘Once you make the commitment, be a man and stick behind it.’

“I actually went back and forth with him about several different things yesterday and then he texted me this morning and said, ‘Dad, I’m committing to FAU,’ .. and I missed the text and I couldn’t get a hold of me and had a couple of recruiters call me and ask me if he committed.”